A character who has been disabled for an extended period, often physically or visually, suddenly regains the use of their disabled organ. Expect a dramatic shot of the crutch being thrown away, or the discarded wheelchair clattering its way to oblivion.

Explanations for this tend to fall into five varieties:

1. The character can override the disability through Heroic Willpower. This is most believable if it's a short-lived emergency override of a disability that makes normal physical activity very painful and difficult, but not outright impossible.

1a. The disability was psychosomatic in the first place, so Heroic Willpower was all that was ever needed to cure it.

2. The disability was temporary, and rest and/or medical treatment have healed it in time for the plot-relevant moment.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

The manga and second anime of Fullmetal Alchemist feature Edward regaining his right arm in exchange for Alphonse sacrificing the connection between his soul and the armor and later Edward sacrificing his ability to perform alchemy as payment to drag his brother back from beyond the gate, and Roy Mustang regaining his sight through a Philosopher's Stone. The latter appears to be a Justified Trope, since Truth probably realized that Mustang was forced to use human transmutation, and so gave him a curable ailment as punishment.

In one of the last episodes of the second season of Code Geass, Nunnally overpowers the memory Geass the Emperor had put on her and opens her eyes through sheer force of will, after being blind from psychological trauma for years. (Her legs still don't work, though.)

Appears as a Justified Trope in the second season of Darker Than Black. The heroine's brother is a Contractor who uses a wheelchair as part of his Remuneration. Typically of this trope, he suddenly rises from his wheelchair at a plot-important moment.

In the final arc of the seventh part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, main character Johnny Joestar regains his walking, which he had lost after being shot in the spine. A large part of his character before this moment consisted in him re-learning to ride a horse without the use of his legs.

This happens to Coco in the finale of Basquash!, as one of the last shots is her getting out of her wheelchair. Considering everything else in the series, it's very likely this was the phlebotinum version.

In Fist of the North Star, one of the Nanto Roku Seiken, Shuu, recovers his eyesight at the brink of death, for a Tear Jerker moment where his greatest wish, seeing Kenshiro's grown-up face, is fulfilled, allowing him to die at peace, knowing the guidance of his star was not wrong.

In the Honoo No Alpen Rose manga, a girl named Marie was paralyzed until she met Lundi. She then miraculously rose from her wheelchair to help him, after which he's limping on crutches and she's apparently fine.

Played with in episode 23 of Aldnoah.Zero. For the last eighteen months, Princess Lemrina has been impersonating her comatose sister Asseylum to rally the Vers Knights. Due to her own disability, she has to pretend Asseylum had been paralyzed during the events of Episode 12 - not completely unlikely, since she was shot in the back and it could have have damaged her back and/or spine. So when the realAsseylum, having woken up without having lost her mobility, delivers a speech to the Knights that culminates in her stepping right out of her wheelchair, it appears to be this, when really she'd never even pretended to be paralyzed.

Played with similarly in a previous episode where Lemrina appears to do this, only to disengage her camouflage and reveal herself to be Asseylum, having just tricked Slaine into revealing his plans to subjugate Earth.

In episode 12 of Walkure Romanze, Mirielle, who was wheelchair bound due to a horse riding accident, manages to regain the use of her legs after watching her sister Noel fight in the tournament. While Noel loses the match, she's not too upset about it in light of her sister being able to walk again.

Using the Dangerous Forbidden Technique Mankai in Yuki Yuna Is a Hero causes Heroes to lose bodily functions. Yuna loses her ability to taste foods, Fu loses eyesight in her left eye, Itsuki loses her ability to speak, and Togo loses her ability to hear in one ear. Later in the series it's revealed Togo was a Hero who Forgot the Call, explaining why she is wheelchair bound. In the last two episodes both Karin and Yuna become seriously disabled, becoming blind-deaf on top of losing ability in their limbs (Yuna even ends up in a catatonic state). In the end though everyone's disabilities are fixed.

Comic Books

For a character who was just pretending, there's Richard Dragon, a comic book character created by Denny O'Neil. He reveals in an issue of The Question that he actually can walk, and the wheelchair was just to screw with people.

In the Incredible Hulk Bruce Banner gets ALS, and is eventually cured by Reed Richards. (The issue ends with Banner Breaking the Fourth Wall, saying it's Just A Story and there's no real cure for ALS, encouraging people to donate to the research to Find A Cure.)

In 52 Ralph Dibny thinks that Dr. Milo is just pretending to be crippled in order to smuggle a magical artifact into the asylum in which he is incarcerated. Said artifact is one of the wheels on Dr. Milo's wheelchair. Horribly subverted when it turns out Milo really is crippled and has no legs. Ralph only realizes thisafter he had already removed the wheel and Milo was left helpless and crawling on the floor.

Iron Man': After Tony Stark had his nervous system replaced after a great deal of damage. He had to learn how to move. During that time, he was paralyzed from the neck down.

X-Men: Professor Xavier, who routinely goes from paraplegic to perfectly healed and back again.

In DC's New 52 reboot, Barbara Gordon returned to the role of Batgirl after decades as the paraplegic Oracle. In the story it's been retconned that she was only paralyzed for three years (of Comic-Book Time), and she and her family found some "miracle" doctors in Africa that performed the surgery that healed her. The cavalier glossing over of the lengthy recovery process that this would logically require did not please the fanbase, and it was hastily revealed that she hasn't thrown off the psychological effects, getting nasty flashbacks every time she sees a wheelchair ramp and dealing with a good deal of Survivor Guilt.

Commercials

An infamous commercial had the late Christopher Reeve standing up and walking away from his wheelchair, while explaining the importance of funding research for the treatment of disabled people. The ad, of course, used CGI to make him walk, and was supposed to engender hope for the future, but the ad mostly got Reeve What the Hell, Hero? reactions from the general public for making it look as though cures for paralysis would be available in the near future, and a few crushed people who were fooled into thinking that he really had been cured.

In Lady and the Tramp, Trusty the bloodhound had lost his sense of smell long ago, but when the Tramp is taken by the dog catcher, he manages against all odds to track him down.

In WALL•E, the humans are incapable of walking thanks to extreme obesity and probable muscle atrophy due to their sedentary lifestyle. By the end of the movie, at least some have enough Heroic Willpower to fight that off and stand.

Films — Live-Action

A famous "heroic" will example is the title character of Dr. Strangelove. As he enthuses over the upcoming end of the world, he rises from his wheelchair to describe his plan before proclaiming "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"

There's a very similar scene in When Worlds Collide, although that man doesn't walk very well though during that scene and probably couldn't stay standing for very long.

The "Run, Forrest, Run!" scene in Forrest Gump is somewhere between the willpower and healing versions of this trope. As a child, Forrest was made to wear leg braces for scoliosis. The braces break off when he runs away from a group of bullies, revealing that he apparently doesn't need them anymore.

The Bride from Kill Bill performs a classic type 1 recovery. After four years of lying in a coma, she discovers she can't use her legs due to muscle atrophy. Since she's a badass, she kills a couple people anyway. Afterwards she commands her legs to work again a bit at a time, starting with "Wiggle your big toe." A relatively short time afterwards, the Bride is not only walking again, she's driving off in the Pussy Wagon on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.

In The Ex, the ex-boyfriend (Chip) reveals he can walk; this ends up being his Moral Event Horizon as he was pretending to be handicapped for years.

Tommy, of The Who's album/film of the same name (deaf, dumb & blind, but it was psychosomatic).

Parodied in The Big Lebowski where after it has been discovered that the title character (not the protagonist) has been a fraud in a number of aspects of his life, Walter suspects that he's faking being a cripple (he's not).

Parodied in Monty Python's Life of Brian when a blind man claims to be healed by Brian ("I was blind and now I can see!") only to immediately walk straight into a deep pit.

Mikey from The Goonies throws away his inhaler at the end, having apparently defeated asthma through life experience. (It can be aggravated by stress and anxiety, but that's probably a bit much.)

Cthulhu (2007). A disabled man who says he lost the use of his legs and testicles in an accident, offers the protagonist a chance to impregnate his wife. When he turns down the offer (as he's gay) he gets drugged and raped instead. When angrily confronting the wife later, he's surprised when the husband (who's got full use of his legs) attacks him. It turns out the whole thing was a setup by the local cult who needed his offspring for their own dark purposes.

In Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's military advisers tell him that a retaliatory bombing raid against Japan can't be done. So he stands up on his paralyzed legs and tells them, "Do not tell me it can't be done." This isn't quite a straight example by virtue of being Truth in Television; FDR was still able to stand, and could even walk for short distances with the aid of a cane, but doing so was difficult and painful for him.

Van Helsing does this in Jesus Franco's 1970 adaptation of Dracula staring Christopher Lee. during the film he suffers a stroke and becomes a Wheelchair user, only to rise again shortly after in order to fend off Dracula

In Avatar, the main character is able to walk againnote there is a surgical procedure that would repair the nerve damage to his human body, but it's implied to be expensive and that prospective patients need to be well-connected to be even considered after having his consciousness transferred to an alien body.

The Princess Bride, "It's conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I'm only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. Then again ... perhaps I have the strength after all."

Of course, in this case the 'disability' was being (mostly) dead, and Westley did actually lack the strength to fight. It should be noted, however, that shortly after their escape, he had found the strength to perform the Kiss That Blew Them All Away.

In Transylvania 6-5000, the hunchbacked butler gradually stands up straight while delivering a speech about the indignities he and his family have suffered. His wife and son then stand straight as well, revealing that they'd only been stooping because that's what everyone expects of servants in a spooky Transylvanian castle.

In furry movieBitter Lake, one of the characters mocks another for leaving his "retarded" brother to run his province while attending peace talks (he gets a mention on the movie's website as "half-witted"), who is then promptly forgotten. He appears at the end of the movie, claiming he never really was retarded, and that his brother only said he was to discredit him. He's also the villain of the movie.

Parodied in Walk Hard, where Dewey Cox loses his sense of smell after accidentally killing his brother. It is revealed to be psychosomatic when he recovers his sense of smell after reconciling with his estranged wife.

Happens twice in Limelight - first dramatically, then played for laughs. After having failed at suicide by sleeping pills and gas, the female lead believes she has become paralyzed and cannot move her legs anymore. Half-way through the movie, during a Rousing Speech to the male lead, she suddenly notices that she can walk again. Later, during one of her ballet performances, she feels paralyzed, not able to go on with the show. Her love interest is unimpressed and slaps her in the face which immediately sends her out of her paralysis.

Zorro, the Gay Blade: Esteban comes to Don Diego's home, where Diego has a broken foot from when he landed wrong while fighting Esteban's troops as Zorro. Esteban insists that Diego walk for him to prove he isn't Zorro. They end up "walking and jumping and running in place," after which Diego is in obvious pain.

Humoresque: Leon the concert violinist spends months despondent, a cripple unable to play his violin due to his arm being damaged in World War I. When Gina fakes a suicide with pills, Leon snaps out of it, picking her up with both arms and carrying her to a couch. Afterwards, he can play the violin again. Justified, sort of, when a doctor says Leon can break through the scar tissue in his shoulder with an act of will.

In the Hurog, duology, Ciarra eventually gains the ability to talk. Justified in that castle Hurog is a very unhealthy place to live in, as it is Powered by a Forsaken Child and Evil Stained The Carpet. Once she's away from there, she gets better. It was probably psychosomagic.

One Redwall book has a hare in a wheelchair suddenly regain her ability to walk and spend every night dancing.

Justified by the fact that the disability was heavily implied to be psychosomatic in the first place.

Near the end of Xenocide, Miro, who had been crippled and unable to talk properly, regains the use of his body as it was before the accident that disabled him. Not actually that miraculous, because what really happened was he discarded his old body and created a new one due to being instantly teleported Outside in order to... it's complicated.

Grandpa Joe does this in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the rest of Charlie's grandparents accomplish it by the end of the sequel. Justified as it never actually says they can't walk, it's just that they're really old and have stayed in bed 24/7 for years and therefore out of practice. All it takes is the right motivation (for Grandpa Joe, the chance to visit Wonka's factory; for the others, being told that if they don't get out of bed, they won't fit into the glass elevator).

In Jane Eyre, Rochester is blinded by the fire that his wife set in Thornfield - one eye is knocked out entirely, but the other one heals over time. His severed hand never grows back, though.

In the book Wicked, Nessarose was born without arms, and cannot walk on her own - she always needs someone to steady her. The Silver Slippers, after Elphaba enchants them, give her the balance for independent locomotion.

In the Lord Darcy mystery short "Murder on the Napoli Express", one man has a pronounced limp when walking slowly, and virtually no limp when walking quickly. The limp is a poorly done excuse for carrying a Sword Cane.

A Sweet Valley High book had a character paralyzed after an accident. Subverted in that her paralysis was never intended to be permanent in the first place and that her doctors stated she would walk again after rest and physical therapy. However, she remained wheelchair-bound long past her expected recovery time and it is soon realized that she is subconsciously creating her paralysis so that her boyfriend won't leave her. However, when her babysitting charge falls into the pool, she has to jump in to save him. Turns out the kid is a champion swimmer and did it on purpose to snap her out it.

In Heidi, once Klara's wheelchair is disposed of and other characters help her practice walking, she's soon completely cured.

In The Secret Garden, it's made clear that Colin was never disabled to begin with, but has been staying in bed out of paranoia and a royal fit of the sulks. For ten years. Once he's willing to try, he slowly gains strength.

On the other hand, the same characters are eagerly talking about using willpower to cure Ben's back, which really does have something wrong with it... but he doesn't undergo such a dramatic transformation.

Averted in the Animated Adaptation, where Colin is genuinely sick and his unability to walk comes from having to stay in bed for said illness. [

In The Poisonwood Bible, Adah, who has walked with a slant and had difficulty talking all her life due to "hemiplegia," finds out she was misdiagnosed, and that her habits were learned in childhood rather than the results of a medical condition.

Eragon, of the Inheritance Cycle, has a most egregious one of these, losing the debilitating scar he picked up at the end of the first book. Combines heavily with Deus ex Machina, and as we find out in the fourth book, was the actions of the dragon eldunari who hid themselves in the ruins of the Riders' city.

Gillian Grayson, in Mass Effect: Ascension, was established as having high-functioning autism that clearly has a serious impact on her thought processes and the way she relates to the world. By the end of the novel, when she's off Cerberus-provided experimental chemicals and wearing an environment suit, she's seen as being in somewhat better shape, but not remotely "cured". In (the Canon Discontinuity that is) Mass Effect: Deception her autism isn't mentioned; she had been an "unstable" twelve-year-old with a "temper", implying that she was in and got over an adolescent phase.

Corwin in the Chronicles of Amber is blinded and imprisoned after a failed bid for the throne. He gets better. Corwin ( and the people who blinded him) kind of expected that this might happen... his family is all-but-immortal and they tend to heal rather quickly (though in this case, it took years).

A modern sequel to A Christmas Carol called Mr Timothy posits that this eventually happens to Tiny Tim; better nutrition and medical care after Mr Scrooge got some much-needed attitude adjustment have reduced his disability to a barely noticeable limp and twinges in his knee if he has to walk long distances, and he describes with some relish the day when he broke his old crutch up for firewood. It doesn't really come up much for the rest of the book, which has very little to do with its predecessor, except when his bad leg picks the most inconvenient (or rather dramatic) possible moment to start acting up.

Subverted in The Dresden Files. Midway through the twelfth book, Changes, Harry breaks his back, paralyzing him from the waist down. He makes a Deal With the Queen of Air and Darkness to fix himself up and gain a level or two in Badass. In the fourteenth book, Cold Days, he briefly renounces her terms for the fix and promptly crashes to the floor, revealing that the Winter Mantle didn't heal him, it merely suppressed his injuries.

Played somewhat straighter (albeit temporarily) for Michael. After almost dying due to wounds sustained in a fight against the Denarians in Small Favor, he retired because of the lasting impact of his injuries, needing to walk with a cane. During Skin Game however, he is granted Uriel's angelic grace, allowing for a spectacularHe's Back moment.

In The Roar by Emma Clayton, a few of the mutant kids are like this, notably a girl born without hands or feet, who uses metal prosthetics that she moves telekinetically.

In the Bigtime series, Lulu Lo spends the first book in a wheelchair because her back had been broken by an ubervillain, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. In the second book, getting hit by an electrical attack by a different ubervillain revives the dead nerves in her body, allowing her to relearn to walk. She spends the third book alternating between her wheelchair and a walker, and in the fourth book has advanced to using a cane.

In Curtain by Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot is in a wheelchair for the entirety of the book. At the end, it is revealed that he did not require the wheelchair and used it to dispose the body of the book's murderer, Norton.

What Katy Did has Katy lose the use of her legs after she falls off a swing and suffers a spinal injury. Her father, a doctor, predicts that she will recover given time. It takes four years, but she learns to walk again by the end of the book.

Averted with Katy's older cousin, Helen, who was left permanently paralysed as a result of an accident she suffered prior to the start of the story.

Defied in Katy by Jacqueline Wilson, a modern retelling of What Katy Did. Katy, like her 19th Century counterpart, is left paralysed after she injures her back falling from a swing (one she makes herself while home alone after being banned from a family outing as punishment for disobedience) and is initially convinced that she can walk again with enough determination. However, she soon learns that it's sadly not possible - the damage to her spine is too severe - and adjusts to life in a wheelchair. A note by the author at the end of the book explains that she was concerned about the original novel's use of this trope and the message it gives to children. This suggests that, even if Wilson had gone down the route of having Katy learn to walk again, she would have presented it as a long, hard struggle with no guarantees of a complete recovery.

In Starlight And Shadows, Shakti is near-sighted; a significant flaw for a priestess in drow society, which values physical perfection. Eventually, she uses the clerical powers granted to her as dual traitor-priestess of Lolth and Vhaerun to cure her eyes.

Live-Action TV

In Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike is in a wheelchair for a couple of episodes after a cathedral falls on him, then reveals that he has healed and is just making Angel think he's still crippled while he's plotting against him.

Wesley on Angel had been shot and used a wheelchair for a few episodes. During that time, he (literally) rose to Cordelia's defense in order to intimidate Angel. It's a subversion, though, because as soon as Angel left, Wesley collapsed back into the wheelchair and told Cordelia to drive him to the hospital to fix his busted stitches.

In the flashsideways, Jack operates on Locke and fixes his paralysis in the series finale.

Inverted in Heroes, as Daphne's disability comes back during the eclipse, when her powers are turned off temporarily.

Played straight in the first season, when Mr. Linderman heals Nathan's wife, who was paralyzed from the waist down, as a "gift" to her and Nathan.

There's also Claire, whose power is cellular regeneration and hence, immortality. When her powers are stripped away during the eclipse, her lack of immune system leads to her swift death from multiple infections and diseases. Luckily, as soon as the eclipse ends, her powers come back and she returns to life.

In an episode of The Incredible Hulk David Banner gets paralyzed from the chest down; when he Hulks Out at the end of the episode Hulk is at first paralyzed as well, but eventually recovers due to his Healing Factor, which heals Banner too.

An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit ended with an apparently wheelchair bound woman being pushed into a swimming pool by her angry husband (who the detectives had just made realize had only her word that she was still disabled). She was indeed faking and the episodes ends with the detectives, perhaps a little too smugly, informing her that she'll now be going to jail.

Parodied in a famous Saturday Night Live sketch which billed itself as an alternate ending to It's a Wonderful Life. George and the townsfolk think that Mr. Potter is pulling the Obfuscating Stupidity version and throw him out of his wheelchair. Sure enough, it turns out he's faking his paralysis as well.

The first character to rock a wheelchair in the series was actually one of the good guys: Dortmun, one of the leaders of the anti-Dalek resistance in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". Dortmun uses a wheelchair due to one of his many failed attempts to devise an anti-Dalek explosive. And not coincidentally, he's a terrible leader whose super-explosives never do what they're supposed to. But then Dortmun finally redeems himself, confronting the Daleks and buying time for the others to escape by climbing out of his wheelchair and standing to face the Daleks at last.

In "Battlefield", the witch Morgaine pays for the damage her son did to an inn by using her magic to cure the landlord's wife's blindness.

Glee: Type Three: In "Wheels", Tina reveals to Artie that she's been faking her stutter to avoid people, and wants to stop. The actually-disabled Artie takes the news quite badly, pointing out the Unfortunate Implications of pretending to have a disability.

Much later on, Quinn gets in a car accident and the doctors aren't sure whether she'll be permanently wheelchair-bound. She gradually makes a full recovery, but deliberately hides her progress because she thinks she'll get more sympathy votes for prom queen if people think she's permanently disabled. In the end, she decides to rig the election so Rachel wins instead, and reveals that she can stand up with some difficulty.

Star Trek gives us Captain Christopher Pike, who's stuck in a wheelchair and unable to express himself other than by flashing a light "Yes" or "No." Captain Pike's mind is still alive in there, but nobody's figured out a way for him to use Morse code, or translate his brain activity into speech. So Spock takes matters into his own hands, risking his own career and Captain Kirk's command to help Captain Pike return to Talos IV, the planet of the obscene craniums. There, Captain Pike can live in a kind of dreamworld for the amusement of the sterile Talosians, but at least he'll be perfectly healthy.

A Taxi episode has Louie taken to court by an old lady who he hit with his cab. When he learns that the woman is a notorious scam artist with a history of phony lawsuits, he decides to "prove" she's not really hurt during the trial by shoving her wheelchair toward a staircase so she'll jump out. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that in this particular case he really had injured her.

An episode of Wings plays with this too. After Helen deliberately smashes her Jeep into Joe's office, he sues her when she refuses to pay. When she shows up at court hobbling on crutches and with her head bandaged, an infuriated Joe assumes she's pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit and proceed to kick the crutches out from under her, causing her to fall, then prods her with his foot, demanding that she get up. Only for Brian to show up and reveal that Helen had been in an accident on her way to court, meaning that her injuries are real and Joe just made himself look like a borderline abusive ex-boyfriend.

In an Easter episode of The Waltons, Olivia is stricken with polio and for a while remains in her bed or a wheelchair — until she hears her youngest child crying out in a nightmare, and in her half-sleeping state gets up and walks down the hall. Apparently the cure for disability is to forget you're disabled.

Subverted in the "A Study in Pink" episode of Sherlock: army doctor John Watson returns after being wounded in Afghanistan, now walking with a limp and cane. But, as pointed out by others, the limp and pain are not constant, and disappear when he is occupied with something dangerous, exciting, or curiosity-inspiring — letting them conclude it's mostly psychosomatic. They are right, and during the first episode it happens more and more often for extended periods until the limp and the cane disappear entirely. We later learn that he was wounded in the shoulder, not the leg.

Averted on Picket Fences for realism's sake, when the older brother recuperates after getting shot. The gradual reduction of his spinal cord's swelling, that restores his ability to walk, takes up a good part of that season, and his getting out of his wheelchair is preceded by episodes where he regains a sense of touch in his feet and the ability to urinate without a catheter.

Eureka: Due to an incident involving time travel, Kevin loses his autism. This gets handled about as well as one would expect given the prevalence of Throwing Off the Disability.

Although given that his mother actively tried to thwart their attempts to return to their correct timeline, as she prefers him this way, might lend itself to some Unfortunate Implications.

Temporary paralysis is a frequent version of Hollywood Healing seen on Soap Operas. Usually, the character snaps out of their paralysis in order to save themselves or another character from a life-threatening situation.

Seven Days: Wheelchair-bound Dr. Ballard is given a chip that allows him to walk again. Unfortunately, said chip contains an alien consciousness that makes him homicidal, forcing Parker to back-step to prevent him from receiving the implant, leaving him in the wheelchair.

Lionel Luthor in Smallville. He is inflicted with genuine - albeit temporary - blindness, and eventually regains his sight. But, Lionel being Lionel, he turns this into Obfuscating Disability.

Played up, down, back and forth by Arrested Development, with a lawyer who fakes blindness in order to get jury sympathy. Michael figures this out and throws a heavy bible at her in court to prove it - unfortunately on the one day when she had been actually (albeit temporarily) blinded. After this, she stops pretending to be blind, claiming that being struck in the head with a bible miraculously cured her. For unrelated reasons, she is also faking a pregnancy.

Olivia does this in the second season of Fringe after seemingly fruitless rehabilitation with Sam Weiss.

On Downton Abbey, Matthew is told he'll never walk again after a bomb blast in the WWI trenches. A few episodes later, he starts feeling tingles, but is told it's just psychosomatic. He finally bolts up out of his wheelchair to grab Lavinia when she falls.

This is treated somewhat realistically, for a number of reasons:

The 1915 medical technology wasn't sensitive enough to detect his chances of recovery.

The doctor is revealed to have known there was a small chance, but didn't want to give false hope, which is consistent with his depiction as medically conservative.

Matthew sits down again immediately and has to undergo a long recovery, using a cane for most of the remainder of the series.

CSI: NY borderlined this with Danny, combined with some Hollywood Healing. It was uncertain in the season 6 opener if he'd regain feeling in his legs after being shot. There are about four eps where he's in the chair, but by the end of the fifth ep, he's standing just fine.

House's limp is all over the map. Partly this is due to treatments (of varying degrees of bakedness) that he tries over the course of the series, partly it's due to how much Vicodin/Methadone/Ibuprofen/whatever he happens to be taking at the time. It's implied that a substantial fraction of the pain may be psychosomatic.

Ana Guerrico of Padre Coraje, who began in a wheelchair. Her recovery is a miracle (reading "miracle" not as an expression of something completely unlikely that happens in defiance of the willing suspension of disbelief of the audience, but an actual miracle with the associated religious controversies between the characters).

In The Big Bang Theory, Rajesh has Selective Mutism when in the presence of women (even when he isn't talking to them), and needs to be drunk in order to talk with them. At the end of the sixth season, after a girl he was getting used to broke up with him (via e-mail, no less, instead of in person), he gets extremely depressed. Penny attempts to console him, and it turns out that he wasn't drunk while talking with her, meaning he has been cured. This is a surprise for both of them.

Subverted on Justified with Johny Crowder. After getting shot in season one, Johny is later shown to be using a wheelchair and appears to be paraplegic. However, when some man come to kill him, he gets out of his wheelchair and walks out the back door to evade them. It is explained that he was not paralyzed from the gunshot but the injuries were severe enough that he is in considerable pain when he walks so he stays in the wheelchair most of the time. As the series progresses, Johny gets out of the chair more often and walks using a cane. It takes more than a year before he is able to walk without the cane and he is never as physically fit as he was in season one.

Michael from Burn Notice season 2 did this when he pretended to be asthmatic. He threw away his inhaler when he revealed himself to the bad guys.

Rumpelstiltskin does this twice in Once Upon a Time. In the season 3 premiere, he lets go off his cane and teleports into Neverland. In season 4, he throws his cane away after sneaking back into Storybrooke.

In the Season 1 finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz nearly drowns and suffers brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. In this episode, and for the first few episodes of Season 2, it's repeatedly stated that he'll probably never be the same again, and it's shown that he's lost a lot of mobility in his hands, can no longer speak coherently, suffers from violent outbursts and hallucinations, and seems to have lost much of his knowledge of engineering and physics that made him a valuable member of the team. He makes a slow recovery over the course of the first half of Season 2, and while his progress is quite amazing considering earlier fears he would literally be rendered catatonic and the fact that he'd made almost no improvement in the first few months after his injury, it's still broadly believable. However, after the mid-season break it's only rarely brought up and never shown to hamper him any more, and notably the whole "life changing injury" story for his character is never once mentioned in the whole of Season 3, when he's fully functional once again and any differences from his Season 1 characterisation are attributed to the emotional trauma he's suffered. In-universe it's treated as an example of Heroic Willpower with a dash of Hollywood Healing, though the complete lack of follow-up in the latest season suggests that it's been quietly retconned along with a few other details from Season 2.

Newspaper Comics

In Dick Tracy, the Mayor's invalid wife pulls off the 'Heroic Will' version: rising from her invalid bed to shoot Mrs Pruneface and save her daughters.

Professional Wrestling

Invoked by Roddy Piper during the buildup to his match with Adrian Adonis at WrestleMania III, he hosted a Piper's Pit where guest Jimmy Hart poked fun at a leg injury Piper had suffered. Hart presented humiliating gifts from other wrestlers (such as a pink cowboy hat from "Cowboy" Bob Orton, Piper's former bodyguard), but Piper turned the tables on Hart, humiliating him in the process. He followed it up by hopping off the set on his supposedly bad leg.

Bret Hart would pull off a similar stunt in 2010, during his return to the WWE (formerly WWF). Despite patching things up with Shawn Michaels over a rather controversial event in the past, WWE owner Vince McMahon continued to hold a grudge, leading up to a match between the two at Wrestlemania 26. In the buildup to the match, Hart was injured while getting into his limo, as a car backed up into the door as he was getting in, damaging his leg. Hart, using crutches, was further taunted by McMahon, who thought he had the advantage going into their grudge match. During the contract signing, however, Hart stood up from his chair, tossed aside his crutches and revealed that he wasn't injured and that he was ready to exact revenge on McMahon... which he did.

One of the few high points of WWF's Invasion angle was when Vince McMahon brought in the legendary "Classy" Freddie Blassie to give the WWF roster a pep talk. Blassie rose from his wheelchair to give an impassioned speech about the history and legacy of the WWF, imploring the gathered wrestlers to not let the forces of the Alliance destroy what took so long to build.

Dead or Alive: Prior to the first game, Hayate ends up crippled and comatose after Raidou breaks his back. He regains his mobility in the second game after Donovan has him kidnapped and experimented on.

Subverted and then played straight in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Similar to the Kill Bill example detailed above, Snake's years-long coma gives him muscle atrophy. Despite the doctors apparently trying to maintain his muscle mass, when the hospital he's in is attacked, he can't move and needs to be given drugs to help him recover - however, they don't kick in immediately, and he has to crawl on the floor before they do. However, once Snake is safely out of the hospital, there's a time skip of a week and then he's back to his usual self, having completely recovered from the atrophy.

In Shadow Warrior, when Enra gives Orochi Zilla, Lo Wang's treacherous boss, a portion of his power, it's enough to completely restore function to his legs and grant superhuman strength to him, which he promptly demonstrates by kicking his wheelchair away.

Subverted in Morpheus. After her first trial with Jan Pharris' healing machine, Claire Moon managed to stand up in defiance of her polio. But it only lasts for a few seconds while she dances with Jan in a masquerade ball, before she drops to the floor as the polio swiftly returns.

Webcomics

Homestuck has two examples, the first being Tavros and the latter being Terezi. For Tavros, it's actually fixed via his legs being sawn off and replaced with robotic versions (Vriska even taunts him with his missing legs). The latter is somewhat of a Deconstructed Trope: she initially didn't want Aranea to fix her eyes, but during a downward spiral of self-loathing she ultimately agrees to it. This only makes it worse, due to Terezi's regret over the decision. Because of her current self-loathing, she saw her blindness as the "only cool thing about her".

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja parodies the Incredible Hulk example above. One of the doctor's old college friends has a Hulk-type power, which is the result of his totally-not-Stephen-Hawking father's experiments to try to cure his own paralysis. His father will involuntarily hulk out too if he gets angry enough. He gets big, muscly, and purple, and falls out of his wheelchair, since he's still paralyzed.

Western Animation

Occurs in Hanna-Barbera's Heidi's Song, with an invalid girl gets out of her wheelchair in order to defend her pet kitten against a Hawk.

In "Bloody Mary", attending an AA meeting convinces Randy that he is powerless to overcome his drinking problem, and starts using a wheelchair for some reason. When sprayed with the blood of the eponymous Mary, he triumphantly stands up and throws his drink to the ground. Justified, of course, because he was only ever disabled in his hypochondriac mind. When the Vatican claims it wasn't a real miracle, Randy even goes back to acting sick, until the kids have to explain the situation to him.

Peggy had to go through this when her muscles had atrophied after being released from her body-cast due to a skydiving accident. In this case she chose to forgo normal physical therapy for Cotton's method, where he purposefully got her angry in order to provoke a response. It was still a long and involved process, though.

When Bill was diagnosed with diabetes, his jerkass of a doctor dismissively showed him a pamphlet of wheelchairs he would need since the disease would affect his legs. Bill defeatedly accepts his fate, but then learns to enjoy life regardless after he meets a basketball player in a wheelchair. Bill at one point subconsciously gets up from his wheelchair without realizing it and discovers that his diabetes had receded, but this gets him mistaken for faking his disability and causes his friendship with his wheelchair bound friends to sour. He feels so guilty that he overindulges in pure sugar so that he could get diabetes again and reunite with his friends, though said friends stop by and tell him to embrace his ability to walk again and that he can still be confident and be the person he wants to be without having to be in a wheelchair for it. Bill celebrates by visiting his doctor and proceeding to give him "The Reason You Suck" Speech before kicking his ass behind closed doors.

An episode of Fillmore! included a computer game reviewer who was in a wheelchair with both her legs in casts. When Fillmore and Ingrid try to bring her in for questioning about a stolen game system, she flees in the chair - then, when the chair gets stuck on uneven ground, she opens the casts, gets up, and runs away. After being caught and questioned, she haughtily points out, "I never said I couldn't walk. I just prefer not to waste the excess energy." Fillmore is unimpressed: "You let people believe you were seriously injured. You don't just fake a double leg-break!"

Also notable in that while she might have been able to run, she had been faking disability for so long that she only make it a few feet before collapsing of exhaustion.

Family Guy: Bonnie flies to Paris to have an affair, and her wheelchair-bound husband Joe finds out. To save his marriage he pulls the "heroic will" version and walks across the room... except it's actually Quagmire, tied to Joe's back, doing all the walking.

Another episode taking place during the winter has Joe crash his sled and suddenly regain the ability to walk... and during his celebratory dance his son Kevin accidentally knocks Joe over with a sled and Joe is crippled again.

Another has Joe revealing that God told him that he could walk one time. He was saving it for his daughter's wedding, but used it to escape an uncomfortable conversation, instead.

Lampshaded in that episode where they rescue Quagmire from a woman who gets a sexual thrill out of torturing him. They confront her and Peter tells Joe that now would be a good time to dramatically get out of his wheelchair.

Subverted by Professor X in Wolverine and the X-Men. The first time you see him in the future, he stands up and runs out of the Cerebro chamber. However, it quickly becomes clear that he is wearing robotic leg braces and he is later shown to be unable to use his legs without them.

Subverted on The Cleveland Show, when a disabled classmate named Gordon claims that Rollo and his friends inspired him so much that he's going to learn to walk again. He begins to climb out of his wheelchair, then laughs, because after all, he's actually paralyzed.

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